Wishing It Were So

Matt Yglesias asks if the economic disaster that was the Great Depression, which many blame for the coming world war, was avoidable, was interwar foreign policy really so foolish. Read:

It’s conventional to treat inter-war American foreign policy with a kind of contempt. This was the era of “isolationism” in which the United States is said to have engaged in the folly of believing that Europe could handle its own problems in a manner that didn’t require American interventionism. US policymakers went in for such daft notions as arms control treaties limiting the size of navies, and even the Kellogg-Briand Pact, an international agreement to “outlaw war.”

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Similarly, if you look at the history of Germany, the Nazis were not an especially large, powerful, or influential political movement. Indeed, as of 1928-29, the troubled Weimar Republic looked to have substantially stabilized itself. It seems very plausible to imagine that a normal economic downturn, rather than a years-long total collapse, would have prevented the Nazis from ever coming to power.

And had that happened, is it really so implausible to think that the US foreign policymakers of the 1920s would have looked pretty vindicated? Not that all wars would have been avoided, of course, but that the era of great power wars would have ended in 1918 rather than 1945, not because of a difference in foreign policy but because of a difference in macroeconomic management? Was it really so naive of Secretary Kellogg to have not foreseen an unprecedented economic collapse years in the future leading to the rise of an unprecedented political movement?

I suppose the question is worth asking, but my answer makes this rethinking sem rather pointless. Yglesias is asking a counterfactual history question. "What would we think if this thing that happened didn't happen?" And while counterfactual questions are interesting it is important that we note we are stepping into fantasy where grand claims can be made without much support. So, as I answer remember that.

Would we consider interwar foreign policy to be foolish if the Great Depression had not happened? Yes. Charles Evans Hughes's Washington Naval conference, which attempted to limit the size of navies, didn't really limit the size of navies. The conference was a success in that Hughes managed to get the great powers to agree to a ratio for the number of ships each power good have. The United States and Britain were given the largest part the ratio, Japan the next largest, and then so on and so forth. (I'll address the problems with the ratio later). The treaty only addressed certain crafts. Yes, capital ships stopped being built, but auxiliary ships, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines went unregulated. The naval arms race of the world continued, but only in a different manner. Hughes manages to change the structure of navies, not limit them. Furthermore, to reach an agreement on the ratio the conference establish, the US and Britain struck a deal with Japan. That deal required that the US and Britain not fortify their positions in the south Pacific. This led to great harm when the Japanese started their war. One might respond that there would be no war in Yglesias's scenario. Well, no, war between the Japan and the United States was coming. Japan had been making increasingly aggressive moves against China, threatening the beloved Open Door policy of the United States. Japan, as a rising power, was moving against US positions in Asia, demanding more and more while metaphorically holding US economic interests hostage. Hughes naval limitations did could not have prevented war or even made a war harder engage in. His conference, while nice, was essentially fruitless.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact was the height of foolish American foreign policy during the interwar period. The intent of the Pact was to end war, a ridiculous and impossible goal. However, that is the overall problem with the Pact. The specific problems are first, it has no method of enforcement. No collective security agreement, no sanctions for countries that don't abide. The Pact is toothless. I represents more of a wish for countries. Yes, they'd all like to outlaw war, but they all privately know that they are probably going to have to engage in war some time in the future, so they don't want the Pact to be able to affect them. The second problem with the Pact is that it makes exceptions for "defensive" war. It doesn't take too big of a leap of the imagination to see countries attacking others and claiming it was for defensive purposes. And during WW2 that's exactly what happened. Germany never actually attacked the mainland of the US. Technically, our actions violated the Kellogg-Briand Pact, but who is going to hold the winner of a war accountable for violating a international treaty that can't be enforced? Because Germany declared war on the US, Roosevelt was free to claim that he was defending the United States. But, in reality, the US was coming to the aid of our allies and attacking Germany. The Kellogg-Briand Pact is the international equivalent of hot air, all flash and no substance, (how many more cliches can I put in here) its bark was worse than its bite.

American interwar foreign policy was truly foolish. The US refused to forgive war debts, refused to join the League of Nations or World Court, and dabbled in wishful thinking. Americans were so angered by WW1, they thought they could make it so war wouldn't happen again. The interwar period was not a period of American isolationism, but a period of American detachment from reality. The US was thoroughly involved in world affairs, but like the neocons of today, American policymakers practiced foreign policy in a world they wished existed rather than in the world that did exist. Perhaps different economic decisions of the US could have averted some conflicts, but not all. Wars would continue, bad economy or not, and that was a truth Americans rejected.